Simplicity is key
In their day jobs, away from The Nextmen vs Gentleman’s Dub Club, Dom and Toby might be operating in rather different genres much of the time, but they’re certainly on the same page when it comes to the finer points of production and the benefits of keeping things simple. TD: “If you’re making reggae, you’re not really doing anything crazy, musically speaking. It’s not the type of music where you’ll be doing any mad production where you have to sit there for 20 minutes making one sound. So when it comes down to it, it’s really all about the feel of the track, the feel of the vocal and how the vocalist sits in their range, and the BVs and horn lines. It’s all stuff that flows quite naturally on quite a simple template.” DS: “If you listen to the best productions in the world in any genre, usually you’ll find that there isn’t that much going on, especially if you’re making sound system music. On a big sound system, if you add more than four elements, it mushes. Wall-ofsound-style music is not for big sound systems; you don’t want too much going on. You have to keep that in mind all the time: how is it going to behave when it comes to a big sound system? How is it going to behave when it’s played on a phone?” TS: “Also, the process of getting stuff mixed and mastered, you’ve got to accommodate for that. If you’re trying to get a premaster sounding as good as something that’s been through hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of gear, it’s not gonna happen, so you’ve just got to be confident and trust what you’ve got. And don’t overdo it. You learn that over time, don’t you? Early on, you throw the kitchen sink at it and then it gets mixed and mastered, and everything’s crushed and pushing against itself. And then you do a track where you maybe hold back loads and it’s maybe just kick and bass and a few bits, and on a sound system it’s just mega!”
: Apart from not overloading the mix with elements, what other considerations do you find yourselves making when mixing for big systems? DS: “An important thing when you’re making club music or music for big sound systems is: which is going to be the lowest frequency? Is it the kick or the bass? And you have to make that decision quite early. You can use sidechaining to punch a hole in the bass, but it’s not the best technique, I don’t think. So sometimes you find that putting the kick as the really low sub that you can hear all the way down to 40Hz – below the bassline, which is starting a bit above that – is a really good technique. The kick hits you in the chest.” TD: “You get that with a lot of dub producers. If you listen to a Scientist record, it’s like the kick will just melt your face. And sometimes the bass might be quite high up, but because it’s moving so much sub, the rhythm of the kick is driving everything. And again, there’s nothing much going on – like four or five musicians.” DS: “And if you’ve got vocals in a track, there needs to be loads of space for them to pop.”
: Speaking of vocals, there’s a truckload of superb singers and rappers on PoundForPound – Kiko Bun (on See
YouNextTuesday), GDC lead singer Jonathan Scratchley, Bristol MC Gardna (on Rudeboy), Joe Dukie (on Highsand
Lows), P Digsss of Shapeshifter and Jurassic 5’s Chali 2na (on HollaMyName), Hollie Cook (on Spooky) and Eva Lazarus (on MistyEyes)… TD: “The selection of vocalists was great, not only because they’re all really talented, but also because everyone on the record had experience of coming in and doing a proper session. Sometimes if you get someone who isn’t regularly in the studio, they might be a bit rusty or nervous, but everyone was fully up for sharing ideas and throwing down on the record. Credit to all of those guys.” DS: “Eva was just fantastic; and Gardna is a tour de force. He’s full of energy and a great rapper. And then Chali 2na – a legend!” TD: “And Hollie Cook is like an ethereal reggae tropical goddess.”
“Wall-of-sound-style music is not for big sound systems; you don’t want too much going on”